“Until lawmakers end the catch-and-release policies of the Obama
administration,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration
Studies, “any infrastructure improvements, new strategies, and better
metrics are pointless.”

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

juarezmex1952 at 1:48 PM August 3, 2010 Forty years ago todate, you would find me, my family and the rest of my farm worker community toiling in the tomatoe harvest. Ambient temperature 100 degrees plus, clouds of pesticide residue, no toilets, no drinking water, we ate our lunch in the fields. We worked as farm workers because that's all we had and knew of. What else could we do for work on farms as some readers suggest that we had options. How easy is it for any of us to leave our respective communities? Our work gave us dignity as impovished as our lives were. We were aware of our plight. As a young man I joined the United Farm Workers movement and raised hell to improve conditions for all farmworkers. Significant quality of life improvements were had: toilets, breaks, drinking water and (shocking) unemployment insurance-no more food hand outs during the winter months. The Gov's. choice to veto overtime pay for farm workers was reprehensible. For any one to suggest that exploitation of other humans is justified by any degree of circumstance is imoral. It is fitting that the Terminator's last movie stint is entitlted: "The Expendibles". That is how he views the lives of farm workers. Shame on him. Hope he and his chilldren enjoy their summer fruit while farm worker families continue

I was born to American farm labor immigrants and my parents fellowed the field work all through my child hood and we all worked very hard in the fields under the very hot sun and almost every year I changed schools. Believe me I know by experience what it takes to be a farmworker so my word counts. The wages were very cheap then but we got by somehow. Nothing has changed today either because the wages are not fair to the American farmworker. I know in my heart the they will get their overtime pay and one day off someday because the years and time will do just that. Justice for all will come soon I pray because American people have a big heart for all American workers

It’s all about DEPRESSED WAGES for BIG BIZ!Anywhere in the State of California there’s the stench of BIG TIME CORRUPTION one will find Sens. Feinstein and Boxer!!!FOR THEIR BIG AG BIZ DONORS, these two La Raza endorsed corrupts twice attempted what they referred to as a “SPECIAL AMNESTY” for 1.5 million more illegal farm workers. They drove this TYPICAL LA RAZA DEM BIT BY BIT AMNESTY despite the fact that ONE-THIRD of all illegal farm workers end up on welfare!THE STATE of CALIFORNIA PAYS OUT $20 BILLION A YEAR IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS!Who benefits from FEINSTEIN BOXER “SPECIAL AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL FARM WORKERS”…? Try LA RAZA PELOSI! Nancy Pelosi has long hired illegals at her ST. HELENA, NAPA WINERY! It’s all about exploitation! Americans, illegals, anyone that puts a campaign bribe into the palm of these highly corrupt women or their husbands and families!

latimes.comFarmworkers, overtime and days off: A California shameThe governor vetoed a bill that would have paid farmworkers overtime for more than an eight-hour day and would have given them at least one day off every seven.By Harold MeyersonAugust 3, 2010

It's not really news when a bill fails to become a law in Sacramento. In this age of partisan gridlock, plenty of good ideas are never enacted.Still, one bill that made it to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk last week, only to be killed by his veto, is worth looking at for what it tells us about how hard it is to clean out even antiquated moral rot, so long as powerful interests profit from it.The bill, written by San Joaquin Valley Democratic state Sen. Dean Florez and passed by both houses of the Legislature on party-line votes, would have made agricultural workers, just like everybody else, eligible for overtime pay if they worked more than an eight-hour day. Under current law, farmworkers can collect overtime only if they've put in more than 10 hours in the fields. Florez's bill would also have given workers the right to take off one day out of every seven.At first glance, and second, and third, the bill looks to be an economic and ethical no-brainer. But in his veto message, the governor noted that he didn't want to put the state's agribusinesses at a competitive disadvantage, which could end up costing us jobs.Huh? We enforce overtime law on nonagricultural employers who can relocate their businesses to other climes. And farms, it's safe to say, are far less of a flight risk than other enterprises.More fundamentally, overtime laws exist because we believe the risk of injury and wear and tear to workers rises if they work past a reasonable limit, and because we believe people's lives should include time for rest, family, socializing and off-the-job endeavors. The right to take off one day a week is as old as the Biblical injunction to keep the Sabbath.By the logic that underlies the very concept of overtime, farmworkers should be entitled, if anything, to more rather than less protection. Does anyone do work that is more physically demanding and exhausting than theirs? In forbidding work every seventh day, the authors (or author) of the Old Testament had agricultural work specifically in mind, because other lines of work then were few and far between.In vetoing the bill, however, the governor was echoing other traditions. Since 1941, state law has exempted farmworkers from overtime benefits (a provision that was modified in 1976 by mandating overtime for workdays exceeding 10 hours). The 1941 law was enacted to conform to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 — the law that established the first federal minimum wage and maximum hour standards.To get the act passed, however, President Franklin Roosevelt had to cut a deal with balking Southern senators and congressmen. He had to exempt farmworkers — that is, the millions of black field hands who sustained Southern agriculture at poverty wages — from coverage. The exclusion applied to farmworkers of all colors, but its purpose was to perpetuate a Southern labor system that had its roots in slavery.But farmworkers, whatever their skin color, are second-class citizens everywhere. California's big farms had no more interest in paying fair wages or limiting work hours than their Jim Crow counterparts, as the 1941 state law makes clear — and as generations of Oakies and Mexican immigrants, and the writers and artists who have dramatized their plight, could attest.Only once in the state's history were farmworkers accorded something close to equal rights. During Jerry Brown's first term as governor, California passed a law creating overtime pay for a 10-hour day, and enacted the only such law in the nation granting farmworkers collective bargaining rights. Three of Brown's appointees to the state Supreme Court — Chief Justice Rose Bird and Associate Justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso — also had worked to advance farmworkers' rights before they joined the court.Since Brown's tenure, however, agribusiness has reasserted its power. The industry was the chief funder of the successful 1986 campaign to oust those three justices from the court. Legislation like the Florez bill has come before the Legislature since then, and has languished. It may take another Brown governorship to put farmworkers on the same legal footing as the rest of us.Wouldn't it be nice if the creation of a single standard of human equality in California didn't depend on one person's rotating in and out of the governor's office?Harold Meyerson is editor at large of the American Prospect and a columnist for the Washington Post. He begins a six-week guest columnist stint on our Op-Ed page today.

“We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers,” said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. “President Obama is on the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws.” *FROM HUFF POSTLeo Hindery, Jr.Chairman, U.S. Economy/Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America FoundationPosted: August 3, 2010 09:31 AM

"Better Than Nothing" -- But We Need Much More When it Comes to Creating Jobs For the entire eight years of the Bush administration, those of us on the progressive side learned to live with the legislation and policy 'standard' of "better than nothing". Heck, they pretty much hated us, and "better than nothing" was, well, better than nothing.But it is beyond disappointing that in just 18 months this standard which is usually reserved for the minority Party has largely become President Obama's standard on what he promised were going to be the most immediate and urgent priorities of his new administration: job-creation and reordering our global trading, especially our trade with China which has been eating the average American worker's lunch for more than a decade.We are stuck in a jobless recovery with a real unemployment rate of nearly 20%, with even the 'false-positive' indicator of GDP growth that the administration wrongly relies on as its sole measure of economic vitality now at only a meager 2.4% annualized rate, versus the revised 3.7% rate of the previous few months. Yet the administration finds laudable - and seemingly sufficient - the 3.0 to 3.5 million jobs that it contends the 2009 federal stimulus bill will have "created or saved" (mostly just saved) by the end of this year, and, even more concerning, the relatively few 5 to 7 million jobs which it believes its three major jobs initiatives will create over the next five years.This latter number unfortunately is but a small fraction of the 22 million jobs we are missing today in order to 'fully employ' (i.e., a 5% unemployment rate) the 30 million real unemployed workers stuck in one of the four unemployment categories: "official", part-time-of-necessity, marginally attached, and discouraged and out of the workforce because they believe no jobs are available for them.According to Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, "Made in America will become the big theme" of the President's pre-election push in coming weeks, and he will "focus on [sub] themes appealing to the economically battered electorate, including policies aimed at keeping jobs in the U.S." Emanuel says that this push will go beyond creating "clean-energy jobs to include more traditional industries such as automobiles and railroads", and, according to Robert Gibbs, the President "will also seek Senate passage of proposals to change tax provisions that he says encourage businesses to ship jobs overseas".However, all the way back in July 2008, then Candidate Obama told the United Steel Workers that, "Change is ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and giving them to companies that create good paying jobs here in America; it's putting people to work...making the materials we need to rebuild America; it's...creating millions of new jobs - jobs that we want to be good union jobs - and giving our workers the skills to do them." So there you have it: 24 months after Obama's speech to the Steelworkers and 18 months after his Inauguration, we hear from Mr. Emanuel that "Made in America" and "ending overseas tax breaks" are finally to be the President's upcoming themes for the Fall 2010 Congressional campaigns.And political commentators and pollsters wonder why so many of us on the progressive, pro-worker side of American politics are so frustrated and cynical.The House recessed for the summer late last week, and the Senate is scheduled to recess on August 6. When they go home, Members of Congress would be well-advised to listen to the will of the people which, according to numerous recent polls, is easily summarized:• Voters are still looking for Congress to act on jobs, which they continue to see as far and away the biggest problem facing the economy. By a margin of two-to-one, they still want to see much more attention paid to jobs initiatives than to a long-term deficit reduction program. • The vast majority of voters, on the order of 70% of total voters, want newly formed independent government agencies - both a "national infrastructure bank" and a "green bank" - to invest in infrastructure generally, transportation and clean energy and in other areas that create jobs. Notably, the same vast majority wants to "put unemployed people back to work at government-funded public service jobs that meet important community needs".• Sixty percent or so of voters favor tougher regulations to limit imports of foreign goods. They believe that foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy because imports have reduced demand for American-made goods, cost jobs here at home, and produced potentially unsafe products - and they say this despite cheaper imported goods crowding the shelves at Wal-Mart and elsewhere. In fact, poll after poll now shows Americans preferring by solid margins good paying jobs here at home to cheaper prices.• Half of all voters believe that free trade agreements or FTAs lead to job losses in the U.S., while just 12% say that such agreements have created jobs. Offshoring of jobs has reached a tipping point as an issue for the American public - around 80% are "concerned" and 50% "worry a lot". Eighty percent of voters give recent administrations, including President Obama's, very low grades (C, D or F) on their handling of these two related issues. When Congress returns to Washington in September, Members would then be well-advised to publicly embrace those jobs-related and trade policy initiatives which voters are demanding. Job creation especially may be the one area where something close to consensus can be achieved, provided the associated initiatives are at least deficit neutral and ideally deficit reducing in the medium term. And the urgency to act is obvious: first is the election coming up just eight weeks from now on November 2; second is the fact that by the end of the year the remaining funds from 2009's federal stimulus bill will have essentially been exhausted; and third is the reality that jobless recoveries don't ever just fix themselves. The four major initiatives that we know would most quickly create millions of new jobs - and do so in fiscally responsible ways - are:1. Invest substantially in the nation's ailing and missing infrastructure under "buy domestic" procurement rules and with funding from a new national infrastructure bank or entity that would mostly be privately capitalized and thus removed from the annual federal budget and deficit. Each $1 billion that goes toward infrastructure creates at least 25,000 and upwards of 45,000 permanent job.2. Establish employment programs for the 5 million out-of-school unemployed youth. 3. Take the steps needed to 'rebalance' the U.S. economy: (i) sectorally, back toward manufacturing; (ii) regionally, in order to smooth the vast geographic disparities which exist today; and (iii) in favor of private (instead of public) sector growth. Of these three areas, the biggest challenge - but the one with the greatest potential long-term impact - is on the sectorally, where the objective should be to quickly at least double the size and the impact of our nation's manufacturing sector. While a country with as large and diverse a population as America's can't fairly prosper with entire regions relatively disadvantaged and balance its budget with one out of every 5 or 6 non-farm jobs being in the public sector, it especially can't succeed and sustain itself with only around 11% of workers and GDP coming from manufacturing. 4. Abandon the deeply flawed pending FTAs with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, since each of these proposed FTAs strongly favors, in one or more ways, the 'other guy' and will be a 'U.S. jobs killer'. Instead, as was promised during the 2008 campaign, focus primarily on existing specific country trade imbalances and on trade cheating wherever we encounter it. Of course, this means that most such efforts should be directed at China, the nation with which the U.S. has by far the largest trade deficit, and its pervasive mostly-illegal subsidies. These four initiatives could quickly create most of the 22 million jobs we are 'missing' today. By contrast, the administration's three remaining major jobs initiatives, while certainly "better than nothing", will create, even over many years, but a fraction of the jobs we need. They are:I. Doubling over five years U.S. gross exports, which the President estimates will create 2 million jobs. This figure contrasts poorly with the more than 6 million lost to offshoring in just the last decade, and the goal of targeting gross exports is misplaced since what matters in trade is net exports or, better said, import substitution. II. Exploiting 'green jobs' opportunities. Yet no more than 20 million such jobs are forecasted to be created worldwide over the next 20 years, and thus we should expect that no more than 3 to 5 million of these jobs will land on our shores over many years and that's only if we enact "buy domestic" government procurement requirements that mirror those of our major trading competitors. III. "Putting small-business proposals at the center of efforts to revive [the] still-sluggish economy", including a $30 billion lending fund designed to give incentives to community banks to lend to small businesses. This third initiative of the President's, upon which the White House seems to be especially reliant, deserves additional comment since it almost completely misreads the jobs predicament in which the country languishes. In fact, it is big(ger) business which has the primary role today in resuscitating our broken economy, not small business. Labor economists and politicians alike fell in love with pumping up small businesses when Ronald Reagan became president, but that was only after big business had established what was thought to be a largely non-erodible industrial foundation for the country, a foundation that would withstand and in fact prosper from the 'globalization' that was coming down the pike. To put this in context, for the first half of the last century, manufacturing constituted about 35% of the nation's GDP, and even after our GIs returned home from World War II and military production ceased, manufacturing in 1947 still made up 26% of GDP. And manufacturing never went below 21% until 1980, when it began its persistent decline to the low 11% level it stands at today. Of course with this decline millions of good American jobs were shipped overseas. Twenty-two million new jobs is the almost incomprehensible equivalent of having to create 140 new Boeing Companies or 90 new General Motors. And the simple truth is that there is no way on God's green earth to create them without the massive - and primary - involvement of 'big business', especially 'big manufacturing business'. The administration's alternative of emphasizing small business has the medium-term potential to create only several million jobs in the medium term.Obviously, we need two or three times more jobs today than what the administration's three initiatives will create over time - on the order of 15 million more - in order not to lose another decade to wage stagnation, extreme income inequality, and wide-scale unemployment.

Leo Hindery, Jr. is Chairman of the US Economy/Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Currently an investor in media companies, he is the former CEO of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), Liberty Media and their successor AT&T Broadband. He also serves on the Board of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund.

The Border: Polls show Democrats have decisively lost the debate over granting amnesty to illegals. But has that stopped them? Hardly. Using the federal bureaucracy as their agent, they plan to do it anyway.

This is what happens when big government becomes so powerful that those who run it feel they can do whatever they want — no matter what the Constitution allows or the people prefer.

Americans strongly oppose amnesty for those here illegally. Democrats have been frightened away from trying to pass an amnesty bill because they're terrified of the political consequences.

But as the Associated Press reports, that doesn't mean amnesty is dead. Far from it. Indeed, the White House and Congress have apparently decided on a policy of "backdoor amnesty" — giving the U.S.' immigration bureaucracy the go-ahead to enforce an amnesty law that has never been passed.

An 11-page memo written by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials suggests that, in the absence of an immigration overhaul, the agency could provide "relief" to illegals anyway. This would include, according to the memo, putting off deportation for some illegals or even giving green cards to others.

"This memorandum," it says, "offers administrative relief options to ... reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization."

In other words, the bureaucracy is no longer beholden to the law — it is the law. Our beloved bureaucrats clearly don't believe they need Congress' OK to do what they want.

"In the absence of comprehensive immigration reform," the memo contends, "USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals or groups."

This would be done, of course, with a conspiratorial wink and a nod from the Democrats in Congress, who mostly support amnesty but are too cowardly to vote for it in an election year.

By letting the bureaucracy ignore current law, Congress avoids the messy process of debating amnesty, which has infuriated Americans and will be a surefire loser for Democrats in November.

This is pure political cowardice. It's also a form of tyranny — an attempt to circumvent the people's will and the Constitution.

"The document provides an additional basis for our concerns that the administration will go to great lengths to circumvent Congress and unilaterally execute a backdoor amnesty plan," said Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. "The problem remains that if you reward illegality, you get more of it."

In June, a group of concerned Republican senators sent a letter to President Obama seeking assurances that he wouldn't try to make an end-run around Congress to enact an amnesty for illegals.

They're still waiting for a response. Or maybe, with the leaking of the USCIS memo, they have one.

Rather than enforcing the law as it exists, Democrats in both houses have chosen to ratchet up the rhetoric, blaming a lack of Republican "bipartisanship" for the failure to overhaul immigration.

"Bipartisanship"? The Democrats can't even muster enough votes from their own ranks, despite having a 255 to 178 edge in the House and a 59-41 advantage in the Senate. They don't want a vote.

So why push amnesty? Do the math. About 12 million to 20 million people are in the U.S. illegally. Democrats hope they'll be grateful — and faithful — Democratic voters for generations to come, giving their party a virtual lock on controlling our government.

Americans have good reason to be concerned, and they shouldn't be fooled by the rhetoric. This isn't about humanitarian concern for illegals. It's about one party's raw, Machiavellian political calculation, and its attempt to subvert democracy

MEXICANS ARE THE MOST VIOLENT AND RACIST PEOPLE IN THE HEMISPHERE!THERE HAVE BEEN 2,000 CALIFORNIANS MURDERED BY ILLEGALS THAT FLED BACK OVER THE BORDER TO AVOID PROSECUTION. WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? WHY ARE THE BORDERS OPEN,?

IN THE CITY OF SALINAS, CA, POPULATION 130,000, THERE HAVE BEEN NEARLY THREE DOZEN MEX GANG RELATED MURDERS IN A YEAR AND A HALF. WHERE’ THE OUTRAGE? WHY ARE THE BORDERS OPEN?

AUGUST 2, 2010

Mexico: 28,000 killed in drug violence since 2006MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico says more than 28,000 people have been killed in drug violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown against cartels in 2006.Intelligence agency director Guillermo Valdes says authorities have confiscated about 84,000 weapons and made total cash seizures of $411 million in U.S. currency and $26 million worth in pesos.Valdes says drug violence in Mexico "is still growing."He spoke Tuesday during a meeting with Calderon and representatives of business and civic groups. Attendees are exploring ways to improve Mexico's anti-drug strategy.The most recent official toll of the drug war dead came in mid-June, when the attorney general said 24,800 had died. He did not specify a time frame.

*Mexico's drug war, my backyard 7/20/2010 By Oscar Villalba, AP

By Carol CullarEAGLE PASS, Texas — For 30 years I've lived on the Texas-Mexico border overlooking the Rio Grande. My hometown and Piedras Negras, Coahuila, are more than sister cities. They function like suburbs to each other. There is no feel of an international border between foreign countries.Piedras Negras is pushing close to a quarter-million inhabitants, while our sleepy little Texas town is about 23,000. Visitors from Mexico like our first-run movies and cheaper gas. We always take out-of-town visitors to their elegant restaurants for a taste of Mexico. (Or at least we did. More on that in a minute.) Our mayors dine together regularly and push for open borders.A few months ago, El Restaurante Moderno in Piedras, known locally as "Modernos," closed its doors, another victim of Mexico's raging drug wars. Its quirky elegance and four-star menu had served four generations of luminaries and film stars. John Wayne dined there regularly in 1960 during the filming of The Alamo and was much revered, if you judge by the autographed photos in the bar. Nacho Anaya began working there not long after he invented his "specialty," which became known as the nacho.The world that was An easy stroll from the international bridge, Modernos provided an ambiance of tropical elegance and Old World charm. The rear entry opened on a floor-to-ceiling mirror that stretched forever. It was a place of whimsy. One could order anything from frog's legs to cabrito (roasted baby goat), then top off the meal with bananas flambeau, prepared tableside. It was entirely feasible to take a lunch hour to drop across the border and dine in elegance in a foreign country. A wandering photographer memorialized thousands of fiestas since its opening in 1918. Modernos characterized the otherness, the exotic charm that was México.And I stress the word was. The Mexico I've known for most of my life is dying away, or rather slowly being killed. You might have read about it in this newspaper, or seen snippets on CNN: Drug wars, incessant violence, kidnappings and Al Capone-like retribution. So distant. So other-world.Yet I live in the U.S., and my world is changing, too.So far away from the fracas, our national media focus on drug smuggling or illegals entering our country and only sporadically cover the encroaching drug violence. Mexico's President Felipe Calderón marginalizes the murders by citing the 22,900 deaths since 2006 as 90% narcos, 5% law enforcement and, "only" in his words, 5% civil population, despite Mexican headlines so lurid as to be almost incredible. There have been multiple beheadings — the latest form of terror and intimidation.In the USA earlier this month, President Obama gave a much-awaited speech about immigration, but he said not a word about the blood wars consuming a country just south of the border.Yet the violence keeps inching closer.In December, local officials — Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster and Piedras Negras Mayor Raúl Alejandro Vela Erhard, Coahuila state Attorney General Jesus Torres and other Mexican officials — were toasting one another in a restaurant in Piedras when it was sprayed with bullets. One of the diners, a woman who had gone out to her car for something trivial, was killed. In April 2009, the Piedras police chief was slain. Now armed gangs fight it out along the streets.Piedras Negras seems to be catching up with Juarez — the northern city across the border from El Paso — as a focal point in the war between the Zetas and the Golfo/Sinaloa drug cartels for this smuggling corridor. (Just weeks ago, stray bullets from an AK-47 shootout in Juarez pocked the El Paso City Hall.)What's difficult to explain to Americans who haven't lived in a border town is that those who do see Mexico's problem as our problem, too. Not just for fear that the violence will seep across this man-determined boundary (which I suspect it will), but the despair that as my Mexican friends lose their way of life, I'm also losing mine. As Piedras is lacerated, Eagle Pass winces in pain.Violence and the economy Terrorist violence continues to escalate in Piedras. A few weeks ago, an incendiary device was thrown over the fence into the parking lot of the Zocalo newspaper; the threatened newspaper has fallen silent. A Canadian tourist died in a carjacking a bit farther inland. These spasms of violence have all occurred after the Mexican military stepped up its presence. Just last year, the military deployed more than 3,000 troops in the state of Coahuila to assist federal, state and local law enforcement. But these youths are poorly paid and easily suborned.The human toll is substantial, but the economic damage has been widespread, too. When the U.S. government began requiring its citizens returning from Mexico to carry a passport (unrelated to the drug wars), the economy took a hit. But when reports of violence began to percolate through U.S. media outlets along the border, tourism dried up. The feeling in the region is that if the totality of this strife gets out, Mexico's government will collapse without the tourism it subsists on. Yet unless the world takes note, and the United States treats this as the plague that it is, this war might never end.The wider, grimmer world of terrorism and beheadings, of a populace held hostage by lawlessness and corruption, isn't half a world away in foreign deserts. It's here, just a few hundred yards from my backdoor. It's time the leaders in Washington and, yes, my fellow citizens understand that this isn't some distant problem in some faraway land.An era of leisurely elegance has been slaughtered, and among the victims is my favorite restaurant.Carol Cullar is executive director of the Rio Bravo Nature Center Foundation in Eagle Pass. Her short fiction and poetry appear in various literary journals.

*

(THESE FIGURES ARE DATED AND NOW THERE EXCEEDS ONE MILLION MEX GANG MEMBERS)Lou Dobbs Tonight And there are some 800,000 gang members in this country: That’s more than the combined number of troops in our Army and Marine Corps. These gangs have become one of the principle ways to import and distribute drugs in the United States. Congressman David Reichert joins Lou to tell us why those gangs are growing larger and stronger, and why he’s introduced legislation to eliminate the top three international drug gangs. *Lou Dobbs Tonight CNN -- July 27 Pilgrim: Well presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama voiced support for yesterday's court ruling that struck down Hazleton's illegal immigration law. Senator Obama called the federal court ruling a victory for all Americans. The senator said comprehensive reform is needed so local communities do not continue to take matters into their own hands. Senator Obama was a supporter of the Senate's failed immigration bill, which would have given amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney took a strong stand against chain migration today.... *Lou Dobbs Tonight Monday, February 11, 2008 In California, League of United Latin American Citizens has adopted a resolution to declare "California Del Norte" a sanctuary zone for immigrants. The declaration urges the Mexican government to invoke its rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo "to seek third nation neutral arbitration of ....disputes concerning immigration laws and their enforcement." We’ll have the story. *Lou Dobbs Tonight Thursday, April 9, 2009 Plus, outrage after President Obama prepares to push ahead with his plan for so-called comprehensive immigration reform. Pres. Obama is fulfilling a campaign promise to give legal status to millions of illegal aliens as he panders to the pro-amnesty, open borders lobby. Tonight we will have complete coverage. *Lou Dobbs Tonight Monday, February 16, 2009 Construction of the 670 miles of border fence mandated by the Bush administration is almost complete. The Border Patrol says the new fencing, more agents and new technology have reduced illegal alien apprehensions. But fence opponents are trying to stop the last few miles from being finished.

LA RAZA NANCY PELOSI HAS VOWED THE WALL WILL NEVER BE BUILT. SHE HAS LONG ILLEGALLY HIRED ILLEGALS AT HER ST. HELENA, NAPA CA WINERY!

*Lou Dobbs Tonight Friday, October 16, 2009 E-Verify- the single most successful federal program aimed at keeping illegal immigrants out of the workforce- is once again threatened. This time, E-Verify was stripped from a Senate Amendment behind closed doors and without explanation. Instead of becoming a permanent program E-verify has been reduced to only three years. Critics are calling this a stall tactic and an attempt at killing an employment enforcement system. We will have a full report tonight.*Lou Dobbs Tonight Wednesday, October 14, 2009 New attempts to put comprehensive immigration reform back on the front burner. Congressman Luis Gutierrez -- the chair of the Democratic Caucus Immigration Task Force -- is unveiling new legislation that would call for amnesty for the up to 20 million illegal immigrants in this country. Congressman Gutierrez will join me tonight *Lou Dobbs Tonight Tuesday, October 6, 2009 The Obama administration could be weakening a successful joint federal and local program aimed at keeping illegal immigrants off our streets. "287 G" gives local police the training and authority to enforce federal immigration law. Supporters of the program believe the ministration wants to limit the program to criminal illegal immigrants already in custody -- limiting the investigative authority of police.*Lou Dobbs Tonight Monday, September 28, 2009 And T.J. BONNER, president of the National Border Patrol Council, will weigh in on the federal government’s decision to pull nearly 400 agents from the U.S.-Mexican border. *Lou Dobbs Tonight Tuesday, September 08, 2009 Federal contractors now must use E-verify to check the status of their employees on federal projects. The rule which goes into effect today will affect almost 169,000 contractors and some 3.8 million workers. The E-verify program has an accuracy rating of 99.6% but has been repeatedly challenged by the U.S. Chamber of Congress. We will have a full report tonight.*Lou Dobbs Tonight Wednesday, March 5, 2008 Immigration experts are appearing on Capitol Hill today to release the results of a study showing the cost of illegal immigration on the criminal justices system in the 24 U.S. counties bordering Mexico–more $1 billion in less than a decade. *Lou Dobbs Tonight

Thursday, May 28, 2009 Plus drug cartel violence is spreading across our border with Mexico further into the United States. Mexican drug cartels are increasingly being linked to crimes in this country. Joining Lou tonight, from our border with Mexico is the new “border czar” Alan Bersin, the Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for International Affairs and Special Representative for Border Affairs.

*Lou Dobbs TonightMonday, February 16, 2009 Plus, even open border advocates agree that the most effective way of fighting illegal immigration is to crack down on the employment of illegal aliens. Yet, those same groups are opposed to E-Verify, which has an initial accuracy rate of 99.6% making it one the most accurate programs ever. E-Verify was stripped from the stimulus bill but who stripped it out and who is opposed to verifying employment status is still not clear.

*Lou Dobbs Tonight Tuesday, January 13, 2009 In Colorado, over 1,300 illegal aliens are being investigated for applying for improper tax refunds. The ACLU has written a letter to the judge threatening to sue if the judge convenes a grand jury to investigate the case. We will have all the latest developments of the case as well as the ACLU’s bullying in pursuit of their amnesty agenda. *Lou Dobbs Tonight Tuesday, February 3, 2009 And WILLIAM GHEEN, the president of Americans for Legal Immigration, breaks down his push for E-Verify—and why the Obama administration is wrong to delay its implementation when it comes to federal contractors

*Lou Dobbs TonightMonday, June 16, 2008Tonight, we’ll have all the latest on the devastating floods in the Midwest and all the day’s news from the campaign trail. The massive corporate mouthpiece the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is holding a “North American Forum” to lay out its “shared vision” for the United States, Canada and Mexico – which is to say a borderless, pro-business super-state in which U.S. sovereignty will be dissolved. Undercover investigators have found incredibly lax security and enforcement at U.S. border crossings, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. This report comes on the heels of a separate report by U.C. San Diego that shows tougher border security efforts aren’t deterring illegal entries to the United States.

SPREAD THE WORD!MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.comUSCFILE.orgCut and paste articles and post email all over the country!REPORT ILLEGALS TO: 1-866-DHS-2-ICE.JUDICIALWATCH.org

AN INITIATIVE TO HELP CALIFORNIA'S BUDGET DEFICIT CRISIS: CALIFORNIA TAXPAYER PROTECTION ACTBORDER CONTROL BY STOPPING THE MAGNETS

The initiative requires illegal alien mothers to apply in person and pay an additional fee for a certificate designating a "Foreign Parent;" submit official government issued identification with photograph and fingerprint, all of which is transmitted to the United States Department of Homeland Security.ENDS illegal aliens use of all public funded benefits including pre-natal, non-emergency medical care and in-state tuition. California is one of thirteen states with this taxpayer expense. In 1987, California had a teenage birth rate below the national average. Pre-natal commenced for illegal aliens in 1988. Four years later the teenage birth rate was twice the national average and the highest of any state. If you understand the multitude of long term problems that are transferred from one generation to the next which are caused by teenage births, you will support this initiative.TERMINATES all child welfare checks that are now direct deposited into illegal aliens bank accounts for the anchor babies. Many of these checks become remittances that are sent out of the U.S. The California Legislature allows issuance of child welfare to illegal aliens for 18 years. Citizens can only receive the benefit for five years. Between 1988-1995 this welfare program quadrupled and continues to spiral out of control. In spite of the budget deficits the Legislature refuses to end this welfare magnet or lower the number of years to five.Public benefits issued to only citizens, or qualifed aliens with signed affidavits verified for lawful status. The text is the same as Oklahoma's laws that have been upheld in district court. The Department of Health and Human Services confirmed the state can require lawful presence of all applicants to prevent state block grant funds from going to illegal aliens. If "birth tourism," and all other welfare paid to illegal aliens had been stopped 20 years ago there would not be the state budget deficit crisis there is today. That problem is costing taxpayers between $2.8 Billion and $3.5 Billion every year.An article in the Sacramento Bee on September 10, 2007 by Washington correspondent David Whitney summed up automatic citizenship: "Although Congress has never passed a law saying so, no president has ever ordered it, and no court has ever ruled on the issue, each of these babies automatically becomes a U.S. citizen when it takes its first breath." Our citizen’s movement will launch the national debate we need to bring an end to "birth tourism" and AUTOMATIC CITIZENSHIP in the United States of America. The movement will uphold the recorded words and real intent of the authors of our Constitution. To the authors and the states which passed the 14th Amendment "subject to the jurisdiction" is to mean even today that citizens are born to parents who are "not subjects of a foreign power." Their intent was to clarify that there is no automatic birthright citizenship.With your support to Taxpayer Revolution we can launch the legal movement to end birth tourism, caused by the unconstitutional policy of automatic U.S. citizenship. Please mail donations and self-addressed stamped envelopes for petitions to: TAXPAYER REVOLUTION P.O. Box 9985 San Diego, CA 92169Formally supported by the American Legion, Department of California, Reps. Ed Royce, Dana Rohrabacher and Brian Bilbray, Numbers USA, and more. Please see Endorsements. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE on-line now.

In Los Angeles 47% of those employed are illegals. What is it the rest of the state (which pays out $18 billion per year in social services to illegals)??? Look around you anywhere and see how many speak English? Know of any construction sites that have an American born tradesman that actually speaks English?Working tirelessly for employers breaking the law by hiring illegals are: Feinstein, Boxer, Pelosi, Waxman, Eshoo, Lofgren, Farr, Baca, and La Raza candidate for governor, Antonio “Taco Runt” Villaraigosa.Untold Story of American Workers Vs. Illegal Immigration________________________________________Untold Story of American Workers Vs. Illegal Immigration By William Gheen

Across America a terrible story unfolds trapping honest and hard working Americans between the proverbial rock and a hard space. It is a story that I have gleaned from conversations with those directly impacted. It is a story I have learned from reading between the lines in the print media.

Many of America's print media publications are now facing well deserved financial extinction due to their penchant for bias, censorship, and promotions of unpopular political positions, rather than reporting facts. No issue illustrates their heavy bias more than illegal immigration.

American readers are bombarded on a daily basis with the latest illegal alien sob stories about how illegal aliens are getting laid off, being profiled, discriminated against, or finding it harder to get licenses and government benefits from mean and hateful Americans, while the most important part of the story is conspicuously absent!

The Americans who are falling down in historic numbers are not in these articles or publications!

The propagandists at the newspapers should take heed, when I remind them of two important things. One, people read the news to learn the facts and not the asserted political positions of the paper. Two, readers look for characters in articles, as well as in movies and books, who they can identify with.

Americans are losing their wages, jobs, homes, health, and sanity in numbers unprecedented since the Great Depression, yet you will not hear their trials and troubles in your elitist newspapers. And if you do get a glimpse of the horror of your neighbors and fellow countrymen, you will most certainly never hear of what I will speak of next.

You will not hear about how illegal immigration is trapping Americans in a vise which is leading to the destruction of their lives.

I hope no one in America needs a lecture on how horrible losing your job can be when there are no other jobs available and that not being able to provide health insurance or even food for your children is a life threatening situation. Marching your belongings and loved ones out of your house in front of a Sheriff's deputy is a story Americans are living out in larger numbers daily.

Many studies tell us that American workers work harder, longer, and more productively than many others on the planet. We are known for getting the job done and done well. Before the recent political invention of "jobs Americans won't do" we got the houses built, the landscapes tended, the chickens plucked, and the bathrooms cleaned without 15 million illegal aliens in the country.

Here is the scenario and perspective you will not find in your newspaper that must be told to the nation.

It has long been a tradition in America for wage earners to take a menial job or an extra job, when times got tough for their individual families, a region, or during a national economic downturn.

If your husband was injured, the wife would take on an extra job waiting tables or as a cashier. If you lost your job, you would seek another one no matter what it was, as long as it would help you keep food on the table and a roof over you and your family's head.

In 2009, when you go to look for a new job of any kind you will find that many jobs are not even listed in the Want Ads because those jobs are filled with illegal aliens and a surplus of legal immigrants. The employers have no desire to spend money on newspaper ads, if they have an opening they just tell the foreman, ask their existing workers, or in some cases call up the drug and human importing cartels in Mexico to order a new shipment of illegal aliens workers, as was the case with Tyson Foods here in North Carolina.

So American workers are not even finding notices for many jobs in construction, landscaping, hospitality and food industries, agriculture, meat processing, textiles, raw materials production, etc...

And even if you do approach one of these employers, you may find yourself in the position that many ALIPAC supporters have reported.

The employers of illegal aliens and H2B visa immigrants do not want Americans in the mix. There is rampant discrimination against America workers because they do not speak Spanish, are more concerned about worker health and safety laws, and might contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement to report illegal workers and visa fraud.

Even if you did go out on your own to find the non-advertised menial jobs, and you made it past the discrimination factors, you still have two major hurdles.

One, multiple studies have documented the common sense knowledge that illegal immigration greatly depreciates wages for American workers and legal immigrants. As far back as 1968, the renowned labor leader Cesar Chavez patrolled the border and ordered his union to call Federal authorities to try and stop illegal immigration. Wages have been significantly depressed due to the intentional hyper inflation of the labor markets.

If you are a full tax paying and debt carrying American, many of these jobs now offer wages that are insufficient for you to even make ends meet!

But illegal aliens are not just in the menial jobs or unskilled labor sector of our economy. We have seen countless news reports over the last few years documenting illegal aliens working on commercial jet engines, or in nuclear power plants, or the technical fields?

With the almost minimal enforcement levels of our existing immigration laws, illegal aliens are working in jobs across the spectrum!

Anyone seeking a job in a call center or the Information Technology fields will find many of those jobs have been sent offshore to India. As for the jobs which remain here at home with Google, IBM, Microsoft, and many others, the positions are taken and being filled with H1B visa holders from India and China.

According to our unenforced existing immigration laws, an H1B visa worker can only be used, if an American worker cannot be found for the position and if the immigrant will be paid the same as an American worker would.

But, since nobody is enforcing those laws, many Global companies are intentionally throwing out their American workers and replacing them with foreign labor that will work for much less!

And if you go out in search of an American small business that plays by the rules and respects our laws, you will find fewer and fewer of them. Honest employers who hire Americans and legal immigrants have found themselves unable to compete with the low bids of less scrupulous competitors who hire illegal aliens. You won't hear their voices in this barage of biased articles either!

Only through the valiant efforts of talk radio show hosts and brave men and women like Glen Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Michelle Malkin will you hear these voices represented in the media. And each of them faces the same threat of smears and lies from the ideology fascists for speaking out for the innocent American workers and millions of victims of illegal immigration, corporate greed, and political corruption in our nation.

So American workers are facing what I call "The Great American Replacement Act" where Americans are being replaced in jobs, homes, schools, colleges, and at the ballot box through rampant illegal immigration combined with historically high levels of new worker visas being issued.

To ad further insult to injury, the illegal alien Amnesty supporting groups and politicians are now trying to claim that even though 11 Million Americans are out of work, we need Comprehensive Immigration Reform Amnesty right away for the approximately 7 million illegal aliens, which are currently holding jobs that our existing laws mandate are illegal for them to have in the first place!

How can so many politicians and people in the media ignore and neglect innocent Americans who are suffering and having their lives ruined? The dire consequences for Americans due to the bad economy combined with rampant illegal immigration are horrific. The fact that their stories are not told and their voices are censored by the print media is even more horrifying.

For things to improve for Americans, we need our existing immigration laws, and all workplace and financial regulatory laws fully enforced. Those left in the media with a soul need to illuminate these problems and side with the American public before it is too late.

We need to know how much the influence the billions of dollars in perks, contributions, and payoffs coming into Washington, DC (See Bill and Hillary Clinton) from Global corporations and countries hostile to the United States like Saudi Arabia and China are responsible for these dastardly, illegal, and unconstitutional policies.

The American public is no longer in control of our national destiny. We are no longer self governed or secure. We are not being asked for our support, we are being told we will suffer in silence or face aggressive ridicule. We are being dictated to by politicians who's pockets are lined with the gold of powerful bankers and foreign nations.

We are now entering an even more dangerous phase where many Americans are losing all faith in the political process. There is dangerous talk in private conversations, and many are saying "America has already been conquered without a shot fired."

Perhaps America's most powerful enemies have discovered how to take us with a Trojan horse? No adversary would want to take us on militarily or do anything to awaken the ire of the American populace. Our own politicians, bureaucrats, and Wall Street leaders have already deeply wounded this nation more than Osama Bin Laden's attacks on 9/11.

Perhaps they have moved on America's Achilles heal of greed and corruption to incrementally reduce the American populace to such a desperate level surrounded by financially empowered subservient foreign workers that we cannot defend ourselves.

If this is the case and if these atrocities are not corrected soon by political means, may God help us endure, survive, or prevail against whatever evil our conquerors have planned for us next.

http://newsblaze.com/story/20090113140640zzzz.nb/topstory.html COST OF MEXICAN OCCUPATION FOR ALL THAT “CHEAP” LABOR:1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state 20 governments.

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens. Verify 20 at! : http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens. Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English! Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies. Verify at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers. Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

9. $200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages are cause d by the illegal aliens. Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US . Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border. Verify at: Homeland Security Report: http://.com/t9sht

12. The National policy Institute, estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.' Verify at: http://www.nati onalpolicyinstitute.org/publications.php?b=deportation

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances to their countries of origin. Verify at: http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm>;

14. ' The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration:! Nearly One million sex crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States .' Verify at: http: // http://www.drdsk.com/articles.html

The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. ………………Knowledge@WhartonImmigration's ImpactKnowledge@Wharton 01.02.07, Illegal immigration into the United States has sparked heated debate in Congress, roiled the two main political parties and prompted hundreds of thousands of immigrant supporters to take to the streets recently in peaceful demonstrations nationwide.The controversy picked up new momentum on May 15 when President George W. Bush, in a televised address to the nation, called for a comprehensive approach to immigration reform. He said he would send 6,000 National Guard troops to four states along the U.S.-Mexican border beginning in June to provide intelligence and logistical support--but not armed law enforcement--to civilian border patrol agents. In addition to securing the border, Bush also said it was necessary for the House and Senate to pass legislation that would allow illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for a long time to remain and be able to undergo a process to become citizens."There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship for every illegal immigrant and a program of mass deportation," the president said. "That middle ground recognizes that there are differences between an illegal immigrant who crossed the border recently and someone who has worked here for many years and has a home, a family and an otherwise clean record." Meanwhile, Congressional leaders have said that they would like to send immigration-reform legislation to the president for his signature before the end of May.At stake in the debate are the lives and livelihoods of as many as 12 million undocumented workers, the companies they work for, !!!!!!! respect for the rule of law !!!!!!, and the job opportunities of millions of low-skill American citizens--both native-born and immigrants who became naturalized by going through the proper channels. The large number of illegal immigrants raises key economic questions: Do illegal immigrants depress wages paid to low-skill workers? Do they take jobs away from Americans? How dependent on undocumented workers is the U.S. economy? Should illegal immigrants be compelled by law to return to their native countries? Or should Democrats and Republicans hammer out legislation that would allow illegal immigrants to pay some type of penalty yet remain in the United States and continue working?Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli and Vernon M. Briggs Jr., professor in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., are firm in their conviction that !!!!! illegal workers exert downward pressure on wages and reduce job opportunities for low-skill U.S. citizens.!!!!! Briggs believes that the negative impact of undocumented workers on American low-skill workers and on labor standards !!!!! is so great that immigration authorities should clamp down on employers who hire illegals so that a clear message is sent to current and potential illegal workers: Illegal immigration will not be tolerated.!!!!!However, Bernard Anderson, practice professor in Wharton's management department and an assistant secretary of labor for employment standards during the administration of President Bill Clinton, says that while illegal workers do have some effect on wages and displace some American workers, their impact is far less onerous than Cappelli and Briggs assert. In addition, Anderson says, illegal immigrants work hard, do not come to the United States to receive welfare and should be allowed to remain in the U.S. after paying penalties.Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer and senior research associate with the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C., says Pew, which bills itself as a nonpartisan "fact tank," has taken no formal position on the immigration issue. But he does say that the data on the broad economic impact of undocumented workers does not lend particularly strong support to either side of the argument.Portrait Of Illegal Immigrants A study released in March by the Pew Hispanic Center, which is supported by the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, contains extensive information on the nature and extent of illegal immigration. The study uses the term "unauthorized migrant," which it defines as a person who resides in the United States, but who is not a U.S. citizen, has not been admitted for permanent residence and has no temporary status permitting longer-term residence and work. The report, which uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau's March 2005 Current Population Survey, estimates that the U.S. is home to between 11.5 million and 12 million illegal immigrants, up sharply from 8.4 million in 2000. Unauthorized migrants accounted for 30% of all foreign-born people in the U.S. as of 2005. Most unauthorized migrants--6.2 million, or 56%--come from Mexico. About 2.5 million, or 22%, come from the rest of Latin America.In 2005, illegal migrants accounted for about 5% of the civilian labor force, or 7.2 million workers out of a labor force of 148 million. Approximately 19% of illegal workers were employed in construction jobs, 15% in production, installation and repair, and 4% in farming. The Pew report also shows that illegal immigrants comprise 24% of all workers in farming, 17% in cleaning, 14% in construction and 12% in food preparation. Within those categories, unauthorized migrants tend to be concentrated in specific jobs: They represent 36% of all insulation workers, 29% of all roofers and drywall installers, and 27% of all butchers and other food-processing workers.It is often said by supporters of illegal, low-skill immigrants that the U.S. economy needs such laborers because they do the kinds of work that Americans will not do. But Cappelli calls that assertion a !!!!! "complete myth." !!!!! Immigrants have been hired to do such jobs in such large numbers not because Americans refuse them, but because Americans are not willing to perform such tasks where the wages are lower than they would otherwise be, where work rules may not exist and where the working conditions may be hazardous. Many employers seek illegal workers for the simple reason that it keeps costs down and means the companies do not have to invest in equipment and other capital improvements. Relative wage levels for low-skill and unskilled American workers, according to Cappelli, have plummeted over the past generation and show no signs of rising.Cappelli says he has witnessed the effects of immigrant workers on wages and working conditions in other parts of the world, including the Middle East. In Bahrain, for instance, where guest workers from Bangladesh are frequently used on construction sites, a visitor can see them using picks and shovels instead of machinery.Why do illegal immigrants force down wages? "That's how markets work," responds Cappelli. "It's hard for the average person to understand that these are markets. If illegal workers left the U.S. tomorrow, what would happen? Some people think nobody would do those jobs. If that were to happen, companies would change those jobs, and wages would go up. Yes, companies would hire the people who are not necessarily doing those jobs now. This goes on in every labor market. There are no jobs that we can think of where, over time, work doesn't get done. It doesn't happen."While it is true that low-skill workers who enter the United States legally also exert downward pressure on wages, there is a significant difference between them and their undocumented counterparts. "The difference is legal immigrants are let in, at least in part, on economic judgments about where the needs are for their skills," Cappelli notes. "That's one of the criteria for being allowed to come in."Cappelli says the United States needs legislation that "faces up to the real economic issues. If you allow more unskilled workers into the U.S., it will lower costs for employers. It will also lower wages for people who do those jobs. It's clearly a political question. If you want to benefit low-skill American workers, you reduce illegal immigration. It's important to have a very clear conversation on the choice we want to make. And we are ducking that by saying these are jobs no one wants to do."Briggs, the Cornell professor, says turning a blind eye to illegal workers, as U.S. immigration authorities have done, can end up harming U.S. citizens and the illegal employees themselves. Undocumented workers can "displace," to use the term of labor economists, African-Americans and other minorities who are young and seeking their first jobs or older minority workers with few skills. Moreover, even if the illegal workers are earning the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour--and most are, according to Briggs--the conditions under which they work can be dangerous. Yet these people have no way to seek legal remedies because they are in the U.S. illegally.Democracy's 'Seamier Side' "Many [illegal immigrants] are working under conditions that are appalling," Briggs says. "Some are paid in violations of hours laws; some are children working in jobs they shouldn't be. It's one of the seamier sides of democracies. ... Some are working basically as slaves." Illegal immigrants are typically males ages 18 to 30 who are very ambitious, Briggs adds, and they will take any job, including those that make them vulnerable to abuse."Illegal immigration is an issue that takes everything down to its crudest level and makes it vile to discuss," he says. "The illegal immigrants will always win in jobs competition with U.S. citizens. This doesn't mean there's anything wrong with U.S. citizens; it just means there is a contrast" between the U.S. and the illegal immigrants' countries of origin. "No matter how bad things are in the U.S., it's better than the country [these workers] are coming from. If it means crowding into apartments or working weekends, they will do it, and they won't complain about sexual discrimination or racial discrimination. Tragically, many employers, if given a choice between illegal immigrants or U.S. citizens, will always take the illegal immigrant."Briggs acknowledges that there is scant data to support his concerns about the plight of many illegal workers. But he is firm in his belief that "if we don't get serious about enforcing [immigration laws], people are going to continue to be hurt. These are the most vulnerable members of society."In Briggs' view, the only effective way to reduce illegal immigration is to take employer sanctions seriously and actively enforce them at work sites. "That means [instituting] heavy penalties on employers who hire immigrants and making it clear that illegal immigrants are not going to work. They are not supposed to be here; they are not supposed to be working. You have to make it impossible for them to work. They will gradually get the idea they have to go back, that there's not much hope they are going to get legalized status."Briggs says it may be useful to require immigrant workers to carry a "job identification" card that they would have to present to prospective employers in order to obtain work and to apply for government services. Briggs opposes building "massive walls" along the U.S.-Mexico border, but adds that "physical barriers" of some kind in strategic locations along the border may help. "We could possibly build more electronic fences that give signals when people cross them and tell [authorities] where they are."Anderson, the Wharton labor economist, disagrees with Briggs' view of illegal immigration, saying the situation "is not as bad as Briggs says it is. ... One line of argument as to why it's necessary to protect the borders is that the failure to do so subjects the United States to an intolerable risk of terrorism, not that there's been any evidence at all that terrorists have come through the southern border. The other question is what impact there is on wages, economic status and employment for American workers. That's where you get a clear divide in the economic literature. The evidence produced by economists who have studied this question is mixed."Anderson says there is indeed much anecdotal evidence that Hispanics now do many of the jobs once performed by African-Americans, such as service jobs in the hotel industry. Anderson says he himself has witnessed such changes across the American South during his travels over the past 30 years. "No one will convince me that there has not been labor displacement," he says. Nonetheless, there also is evidence that many African-Americans no longer perform low-skill service jobs--not because illegal immigrants have taken those jobs from them, but because they have moved on to take better-paying jobs or have grown older and retired from the labor force."There has been substantial [improvement] in the economic status of minorities in this country as a result of the civil rights movement," Anderson says. "There is no question that African-Americans have benefited in their occupational status as a result of that." He says that 70% of black workers today hold white-collar and service-sector jobs, while others are working in the many auto-manufacturing plants that have sprung up across the South.Weighing all the available evidence, and noting that the data are mixed, Anderson concludes that "there has been some displacement and some depression of wages" among U.S. citizens as a result of illegal immigration. "But it has not, in the main, had a significant effect in reducing the earnings and employment opportunities of American workers, including minority-group workers. Immigration, including illegal immigration, has not been terribly detrimental to employment opportunities for African-Americans. I firmly believe this. It is for that reason that you don't find African-American political leaders lining up with the opponents of immigration."When you look at opponents of illegal immigration, Anderson adds, "you find the same right-wing, reactionary scoundrels who have opposed progressive legislation, who have opposed the minimum wage and efforts to improve the economic opportunities of minorities."What kind of an immigration bill would Anderson like to see emerge from Congress? "We must secure the borders. That has to be part of any legislation. We have to recognize that the huge numbers [of undocumented workers in the U.S.] are not here to receive welfare; they are here to work. If there were no employment opportunities for them, they wouldn't be coming. But we should not have an immigration system that allows immigrant workers to reduce the wages and diminish the working conditions of American workers. Therefore, I say protect the borders to significantly reduce the inflow. We should then move toward the legalization of those who are already here. If we legalize them [after requiring them to pay a penalty], then we let them out of the box they are imprisoned in and set in motion a process for improving wages and working conditions."

99 Weeks Later, Jobless Have Only DesperationBy MICHAEL LUOBRATTLEBORO, Vt. — Facing eviction from her Tennessee apartment after several months of unpaid rent, Alexandra Jarrin packed up whatever she could fit into her two-door coupe recently and drove out of town. Ms. Jarrin, 49, wound up at a motel here, putting down $260 she had managed to scrape together from friends and from selling her living room set, enough for a weeklong stay. It was essentially all the money she had left after her unemployment benefits expired in March. Now she is facing a previously unimaginable situation for a woman who, not that long ago, had a corporate job near New York City and was enrolled in a graduate business school, whose sticker is still emblazoned on her back windshield. “Barring a miracle, I’m going to be in my car,” she said. Ms. Jarrin is part of a hard-luck group of jobless Americans whose members have taken to calling themselves “99ers,” because they have exhausted the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits that they can claim. For them, the resolution recently of the lengthy Senate impasse over extending jobless benefits was no balm. The measure renewed two federal programs that extended jobless benefits in this recession beyond the traditional 26 weeks to anywhere from 60 to 99 weeks, depending on the state’s unemployment rate. But many jobless have now exceeded those limits. They are adjusting to a new, harsh reality with no income. In June, with long-term unemployment at record levels, about 1.4 million people were out of work for 99 weeks or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Not all of them received unemployment benefits, but for many of those who did, the modest payments were a lifeline that enabled them to maintain at least a veneer of normalcy, keeping a roof over their heads, putting gas in their cars, paying electric and phone bills. Without the checks, many like Ms. Jarrin, who lost her job as director of client services at a small technology company in March 2008, are beginning to tumble over the economic cliff. The last vestiges of their former working-class or middle-class lives are gone; it is inescapable now that they are indigent. Ms. Jarrin said she wept as she drove away from her old life last month, wondering if she would ever be able to reclaim it. “At one point, I thought, you know, what if I turned the wheel in my car and wrecked my car?” she said. Nevertheless, the political appetite to help people like Ms. Jarrin appears limited. Over the last few months, 99ers have tried to organize to press Congress to provide an additional tier of unemployment insurance. But the political potency of fears about the skyrocketing deficit has drowned them out. The notion that unemployment benefits discourage recipients from finding work has also crept into Republican arguments against extensions. As a result, the plight of 99ers was notably absent from the recent debate in the Senate. Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, is now working on a bill to help those in the group, a spokesman, Miguel Ayala, said, but the chances of providing them with additional weeks of benefits seem dim. “It’s going to be extremely hard to pass,” said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project. “We barely got 60 votes to keep 99 weeks, so it’s even harder to get more.” Other ways of helping the long-term jobless might have a better shot of succeeding, Mr. Stettner said, like a temporary jobs program or assistance for emergency needs. Ms. Jarrin ping-pongs between resolve and despair. She received her last unemployment check in the third week of March, putting her among the first wave of 99ers. Her two checking accounts now show negative balances (she has overdrafts on both). Her cellphone has been ringing incessantly with calls from the financing company for her car loan. Her vehicle is on the verge of being repossessed. It is a sickening plummet, considering that she was earning $56,000 a year in her old job, enjoyed vacationing in places like Mexico and the Caribbean, and had started business school in 2008 at Iona College. Ms. Jarrin had scrabbled for her foothold in the middle class. She graduated from college late in life, in 2003, attending classes while working full time. She used to believe that education would be her ticket to prosperity, but is now bitter about what it has gotten her. “I owe $92,000 for an education which is basically worthless,” she said. Last year she moved to Brentwood, Tenn., south of Nashville, in search of work. After initially trying to finish her M.B.A. program remotely, she dropped out because of the stress from her sinking finances. She has applied for everything from minimum-wage jobs to director positions. She should have been evicted from her two-bedroom apartment several months ago, but the process was delayed when flooding gripped middle Tennessee in May. In mid-July, a judge finally gave her 10 days to vacate. Helped by some gas cards donated by a church, she decided to return to this quiet New England town, where she had spent most of her adult life. She figured the health care safety net was better, as well as the job market. She contacted a local shelter but learned there was a waiting list. Welfare is not an option, because she does not have young children. She says none of her three adult sons are in a position to help her. A friend wired her $200 while she was driving from Tennessee, enabling her to check into a motel along the way and helping to pay for her stay here. But Ms. Jarrin doubts that much more charity is coming. “The only help I’m going to get is from myself,” she said. “I’m going to have to take care of me. That has to be through a job.” So, in her drab motel room, Ms. Jarrin has been spending her days surfing the Internet, applying for jobs. Lining the shelves underneath the television are her food supplies: rice and noodles that Ms. Jarrin mixes with water in the motel’s ice bucket and heats up in a microwave; peanut butter and jelly; a loaf of white bread. Ms. Jarrin still has food stamps, which she qualified for in Tennessee. But she is required to report her move, which will cut them off, so she will have to reapply in Vermont. She has been struggling with new obstacles, like what to do when an address is required in online applications. She is worried about what will happen when her cellphone is finally cut off, because then any calls to the number she sent out with her résumés will disappear into a netherworld. The news, however, has not been all bad. She had her first face-to-face interview in more than a year, for a coordinator position at a nonprofit drop-in center, on Monday. And last Thursday, she got her first miracle, when an old friend from New York sent by overnight mail $300 in cash, enough for another week in purgatory. *THIS FIGURE IS DATED. LAST COUNT IT WAS HOVERING AROUND $50 MILLION AND GOING UP AS FAST AS THE MEXICAN CAN GET PREGNANT!

Welfare and food stamp benefits soar $3 million higher than September payout. New statistics from the Department of Public Social Services reveal that illegal aliens and their families in Los Angeles County collected over $37 million in welfare and food stamp allocations in November 2007 – up $3 million dollars from September, announced Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich. Twenty five percent of the all welfare and food stamps benefits is going directly to the children of illegal aliens. Illegals collected over $20 million in welfare assistance for November 2007 and over $16 million in monthly food stamp allocations for a projected annual cost of $444 million. “This new information shows an alarming increase in the devastating impact Illegal immigration continues to have on Los Angeles County taxpayers,” said Antonovich. “With $220 million for public safety, $400 million for healthcare, and $444 million in welfare allocations, the total cost for illegal immigrants to County taxpayers far exceeds $1 billion a year – not including the millions of dollars for education.”

“Walsh stated. Walsh said his analysis indicating there are 38 million illegal aliens in the U.S. was calculated using the conservative estimate of three illegal immigrants entering the U.S. for each one apprehended.”

Illegal alien population may be as high as 38 million

Study: Illegal alien population may be as high as 38 million A new report finds the Homeland Security Department "grossly underestimates" the number of illegal aliens living in the U.S. Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Studies released a report August 31 that estimates the number of illegal aliens residing in the U.S. is between 8 and 12 million. But the group Californians for Population Stabilization, or CAPS, has unveiled a report estimating the illegal population is actually between 20 and 38 million. Four experts, all of whom contributed to the study prepared by CAPS, discussed their findings at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington Wednesday. James Walsh, a former associate general counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said he is "appalled" that the Bush administration, lawyers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and every Democratic presidential candidate, with the exception of Joe Biden, have no problem with sanctuary cities for illegal aliens. "Ladies and gentlemen, the sanctuary cities and the people that support them are violating the laws of the United States of America. They're violating 8 USC section 1324 and 1325, which is a felony -- [it's] a felony to aid, support, transport, shield, harbor illegal aliens," Walsh stated. Walsh said his analysis indicating there are 38 million illegal aliens in the U.S. was calculated using the conservative estimate of three illegal immigrants entering the U.S. for each one apprehended. According to Walsh, "In the United States, immigration is in a state of anarchy -- not chaos, but anarchy."

IT’S ALSO THE NEXT GENERATION AFTER GENERATION OF “CHEAP” (FOR EMPLOYERS) MEXICAN LABOR......!

REALITY CHECK: One of the fastest ways Mexico expands their WELFARE SYSTEM in our borders is by packing off millions of pregnant Mexicans over our borders to loot the gringo welfare!These children are then raised to be typical Mexican racist with contempt for the gringo, our laws, flag, culture and language!They are indoctrinated to believe that America is AZTLAN! As yet an unincorporated province of Mexico!*

"Remember 187 -- the Proposition to deny taxpayer funds for services to non-citizens -- was the last gasp of white America in California." ---Art Torres, Chairman of the California Democratic PartyAnchor Baby Power La Voz de Aztlan has produced a video in honor of the millions of babies that have been born as US citizens to Mexican undocumented parents. These babies are destined to transform America. The nativist CNN reporter Lou Dobbs estimates that there are over 200,000 "Anchor Babies" born every year whereas George Putnam, a radio reporter, says the figure is closer to 300,000. La Voz de Aztlan believes that the number is approximately 500,000 "Anchor Babies" born every year. The video below depicts the many faces of the "Anchor Baby Generation". The video includes a fascinating segment showing a group of elementary school children in Santa Ana, California confronting the Minutemen vigilantes. The video ends with a now famous statement by Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez of the University of Texas at Austin.

http://www.aztlan.net/anchor_baby_power.htm

*Anchor Babies Grab One Quarter of Welfare Dollars in LA Co

The anchor baby scam has proven lucrative for illegal aliens in Los Angeles County, at considerable cost to our own poor and downtrodden legal citizenry.

The numbers show that more than $50 million in CalWORKS benefits and food stamps for January went to children born in the United States whose parents are in the country without documentation. This represents approximately 23 percent of the total benefits under the state welfare and food stamp programs, Antonovich said.

"When you add this to $350 million for public safety and nearly $500 million for health care, the total cost for illegal immigrants to county taxpayers far exceeds $1 billion a year -- not including the millions of dollars for education," Antonovich said.

I love children and I'm all for compassion -- smart, teach-them-to-fish compassion. But when laws, the Constitution, and enforcement allow illegal aliens (the operative word here being "illegal") to insinuate themselves into our nation and bleed us of our precious financial resources, then laws, the Constitution and enforcement need to be changed.

*

Birthright citizenship: The big Republican issue for 2010 elections?

Don't be surprised if you hear the phrase "birthright citizenship" a whole bunch of times before the November election.The U.S. rule that all persons born in this country automatically become citizens is becoming a major front for Republicans in the immigration debate.On Sunday, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican senator, expressed support for hearings on the issue. Last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, generally considered a moderate on immigration, said he may introduce a constitutional amendment so children of illegal immigrants did not become citizens.Sen. Lindsey Graham has called for an amendment to end "birthright citizenship.""People come here to have babies," he said. "They come here to drop a child. It's called "drop and leave."While there is already legislation to eliminate birthright citizenship, making the change would probably require a constitutional amendment, a much more difficult task. That's because the Fourteenth Amendment states:All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.Supporters of a change say the amendment adopted just after the Civil War was designed simply to make sure that former slaves became citizens, and wasn't intended to apply to illegal immigrants' kids. But the pro-immigration Immigration Policy Center offers a rebuttal, with scholar Elizabeth Wydra citing the "clear intent of the Reconstruction framers to grant U.S. citizenship based on the objective measure of U.S. birth rather than subjective political or public opinion."There's already a sense that the Republicans will want to make immigration a big issue. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has seen a rapid rise in popularity in the wake

*MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.comFAIRUS.orgJUDICIALWATCH.orgALIPAC.us*JUDICIAL WATCHSANCTUARY COUNTY LOS ANGELES SPENDS $600 MILLION ON WELFARE FOR ILLEGALSCounty Spends $600 Mil On Welfare For Illegal ImmigrantsLast Updated: Thu, 03/11/2010 - 3:14pm For the second consecutive year taxpayers in a single U.S. county will dish out more than half a billion dollars just to cover the welfare and food-stamp costs of illegal immigrants. Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, may be in the midst of a dire financial crisis but somehow there are plenty of funds for illegal aliens. In January alone, anchor babies born to the county’s illegal immigrants collected more than $50 million in welfare benefits. At that rate the cash-strapped county will pay around $600 million this year to provide illegal aliens’ offspring with food stamps and other welfare perks.

THE EXORBITANT FIGURE DOES NOT INCLUDE THE ENORMOUS COST OF EDUCATING, MEDICALLY TREATING, OR INCARCERATING ILLEGALS ALIENS. THIS COSTS THE COUNTY AN ADDITIONAL ONE BILLION DOLLARS.

The exorbitant figure, revealed this week by a county supervisor, doesn’t even include the enormous cost of educating, medically treating or incarcerating illegal aliens in the sprawling county of about 10 million residents. Los Angeles County annually spends more than $1 billion for those combined services, including $500 million for healthcare and $350 million for public safety. About a quarter of the county’s welfare and food stamp issuances go to parents who reside in the United States illegally and collect benefits for their anchor babies, according to the figures from the county’s Department of Social Services. In 2009 the tab ran $570 million and this year’s figure is expected to increase by several million dollars. Illegal immigration continues to have a “catastrophic impact on Los Angeles County taxpayers,” the veteran county supervisor (Michael Antonovich) who revealed the information has said. The former fifth-grade history teacher has repeatedly come under fire from his liberal counterparts for publicizing statistics that confirm the devastation illegal immigration has had on the region. Antonovich, who has served on the board for nearly three decades, represents a portion of the county that is roughly twice the size of Rhode Island and has about 2 million residents.His district is simply a snippet of a larger crisis. Nationwide, Americans pay around $22 billion annually to provide illegal immigrants with welfare benefits that include food assistance programs such as free school lunches in public schools, food stamps and a nutritional program (known as WIC) for low-income women and their children. Tens of billions more are spent on other social services, medical care, public education and legal costs such as incarceration and public defenders.

3 August 2010Stock markets in Asia, Europe and the US rose sharply Monday as major banks and corporations reported bumper profits despite signs of slowing economic growth. In Europe, stocks rose to a three-month high after the continent’s biggest bank, HSBC, and France’s largest lender, BNP Paribas, reported higher-than-expected earnings. The stocks of mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto also soared.

In the US, the Dow jumped 208 points, or 1.99 percent, and the other major indexes recorded similar rises. The rally came despite the Commerce Department report last Friday that US gross domestic product growth in the second quarter slowed to 2.4 percent at an annual rate from 3.7 percent in the first quarter and 5.0 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009. The negative economic news was reinforced with Monday’s report of a drop in US manufacturing activity in July.

Earlier in July, the International Monetary Fund forecast slower economic growth worldwide over the next 18 months and revised downward its previous estimates for 2011 for the United States and major economies in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Such anemic growth rates ensure that unemployment will remain at near-depression levels for many months, and even years, to come. It has now become routine for US officials to declare matter-of-factly that there will be no significant easing of the jobs crisis any time soon.

In Europe, virtually every government is imposing draconian austerity measures, slashing jobs and wages, raising taxes on consumption, and gutting social programs. In the US, the Obama administration has dropped even its miserly stimulus initiatives. It is proposing nothing either to bring down unemployment or provide relief for the 26 million unemployed and underemployed workers, including nearly 7 million who have been out of work for more than six months. Instead, it is pledging to cut basic social programs in the coming months.

The financial markets on Monday celebrated the results of this deliberate policy of the international bourgeoisie to use mass unemployment to drive down wages, increase productivity and boost corporate profits, even under conditions of stagnating or falling sales and revenues.

In Europe, about 60 percent of companies in the Stoxx 600 to have reported earnings since July 12 have exceeded analysts’ projections. In the US, with 70 percent of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index reporting their earnings, profits are running 42 percent higher than a year ago, even though sales are up only 9 percent.

The banks and big investors were further encouraged by remarks from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who in a Monday speech confirmed that the Fed would keep extending virtually free credit to Wall Street by holding interest rates to near-zero. At the same time, he made clear that unemployment would remain extremely high for an indefinite period, and indicated the Fed had no plans to take measures to bring the jobless rate down.

The same day, President Obama gave a television interview in which he touted the supposed success of his economic policies and declared that the US was “half-way” back to full recovery. This as more than one in five Americans suffered an income loss of 25 percent or more in 2009, over a million families a year are losing their homes in foreclosures, and 1.4 million people unemployed for 99 weeks or more have exhausted all benefits and are without cash income.

The financial markets were also, no doubt, buoyed by the Greek social democratic government’s successful use of the military to break a strike by truck drivers over the weekend.

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Monday wrote frankly about the class-war strategy of the ruling elite. He noted “growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn’t care—that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal.”

He suggested that “those in power” would “soon declare that high unemployment is ‘structural,’ a permanent part of the economic landscape.…” He went on to predict, “Two years from now unemployment will still be extremely high, quite possibly higher than it is now.…”

The key factor in enabling the bourgeoisie, thus far, to impose such a policy is the treachery and complicity of the trade unions. In Europe, the unions, aided politically by their allies among the middle-class “left” groups, have worked to contain and dissipate mass working class opposition to austerity measures, especially in Greece, Spain, Portugal and France. They have limited resistance to token strikes and protests, while collaborating with their respective governments to impose the cuts demanded by the international banks and financial markets.

In the US, the AFL-CIO and the rival Change-to-Win union federation barely make a dent on the political landscape. They propose nothing, organize nothing and devote their efforts to providing political cover for the Obama administration and diverting working class anger along the reactionary channels of economic nationalism.

The role of the American unions was summed up last week when the United Auto Workers showcased Obama’s appearance at two auto plants in Detroit. In a revolting spectacle, Obama boasted of “saving” the US auto industry with his bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, ignoring the role of his Auto Task Force in cutting the wages of newly hired workers to $14, half that of older workers, closing plants, slashing tens of thousands of auto-related jobs, and slashing the health benefits of retired workers.

Nearly two years after the financial meltdown of September 2008, the banks exercise a tighter grip on government policy than ever before. They will continue to use mass unemployment to destroy workers’ wages and living standards until the working class breaks free of the trade union bureaucracy and mounts a mass industrial and political struggle against the financial-corporate oligarchy and its political servants.

This requires a socialist program, calling for a massive program of public works to provide jobs for all, and the nationalization of the banks and major corporations under the democratic control of the working class.

The American Legion Takes A Stand Against Illegal Immigration *Tags : 9/11, American Legion, Fort Dix, Illegal immigration, National Commander David K. Rehbein, National Security, Terrorism, Terrorists, The American Legion Policy on Immigration: A Strategy to Address Illegal Immigration in the United States, Veterans Organizations

The America Legion recently released a statement on ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, a very pointed statement. The Legion published their policy in a 30 page booklet, spelling their policy out in detail: The nation’s largest veterans organization released this week a policy bulletin that takes a firm stand against illegal immigration and calls on its members to hold elected officials accountable for implementing and enforcing U.S. immigration law.

The 30-page bulletin is officially titled, “The American Legion20Policy on Immigration: A Strategy to Address Illegal Immigration in the United States.” It is about time that a group who stands up for veterans of all services, whether they served in peacetime or wartime took a tough stand on a problem that is overwhelming this country. We have roughly 25 million veterans in this country who served honorably to protect the legal residents of this country, not the people who invade our borders nearly unchecked. More from WND on the American Legion: “The American Legion members have served in the U.S. Armed Forces throughout the world so that Americans can be safe at home,” the organization’s website explains. “This gives them a unique perspective to the threat that open borders present to their homeland.” “America is a nation built by immigrants and the American Legion recognizes and celebrates that,” said National Commander David K. Rehbein in a press release. “We do take strong issue, however, with illegal immigration. It’s a matter of national security. The 9/11 hijackers and three of the men who plotted to kill innocent Americans at Ft. Dix were perfect examples of terrorists exploiting our weak immigration laws and our lack of enforcement. This booklet is a good reminder that America has a serious problem that needs to be addressed.” The Legion’s stance on illegal immigration is clearly stated o n page 1 of the booklet, it stands alone: “The American Legion is opposed to any person or persons being in this country illegally, regardless of race, sex, creed, color or national origin,” the bulletin states. “We believe the current laws governing immigration should be enforced impartially and equally.” The America Legion has a long history that dates back to Theodore Roosevelt. The Legion knows something about supporting veterans and the laws of this country. Read on: Originally founded in 1919 on an idea proposed by Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (the president of the same name’s eldest son), the Legion has now grown to a membership of more than 2.6 million wartime veterans organized in more than 14,000 posts nationwide. The policy bulletin explains, “Legionnaires subscribe to a creed, ‘To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America; to maintain law and order and to foster and perpetuate a 100 percent Americanism.’ These words are recited in unison at Legion meetings and represent a continuing contract of service to benefit America and it is this commitment by Legionnaires that is the fuel for action on illegal immigration and other national security concerns facing this country.” The Legion hopes the policy booklet will educate the American public on how “the security, economy and social fabric of the United States of America is=2 0seriously threatened by individuals who are illegally in this country.” “Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime,” the booklet states. “The poor, minorities, children and individuals with little education are particularly vulnerable. It causes an enormous drain on public services, depresses wages of American workers, and contributes to population growth that, in turn, contributes to school overcrowding and housing shortages. Directly and indirectly, U.S. taxpayers are paying for illegal immigration.” In financial terms, the booklet cites a report by the Center for Immigration Studies that claims the average illegal alien household in 2003 paid approximately $4,200 in federal taxes while, on average, created $7,000 in costs at the federal level. The booklet does highlight a real problem that the USA faces despite the formation of the Department of Homeland Security. It spells out that it is about educating all people on the dearth of security issues still face this country today. Not only did they publish this booklet for education purposes but it also contains language that discusses ways to prevent these security issues: In response to what it sees as a contributing factor to crime, terrorism, unemployment and depressed wages, the Legion proposes the following five-point strategy urging the federal government to enact the following steps: *1. Secure the borders and other points of entry in the United States, including construction of a physical barrier and sufficient Border Patrol presence. *2. Eliminate the jobs magnet and social services benefits that draw illegal immigrants to the U.S. by enforcing laws sanctioning employers who hire illegal aliens, implementing employment eligibility verification and eliminating government benefits for illegal aliens. (47% of those with a job in Mex occupied Los Angeles are ILLEGALS!)*3. Eliminate amnesty laws that permit illegal aliens to break the law and remain in the U.S. *4. Reduce the U.S. illegal alien population by attrition through workplace enforcement, interagency and interstate cooperation, rejection of driver’s license plans, mandating English as national language and establishing parameters for noncriminal deportations. (LA RAZA WHORES, FEINSTEIN, BOXER, PELOSI, WAXMAN, AND CLINTON HAVE LONG PUSHED FOR DRIVER’S LICENSE de facto citizenship for ILLEGALS, ALONG WITH NO ENGLISH ONLY, AND NO ID TO VOTE!)*5. Screen and track foreign visitors legally entering the United States. The plan further calls for reforms to current legal immigration policy, including alteration of the non-immigrant visa program that allows some nations’ citizens entrance to the U.S. without a visa application, elimination of the visa lottery that randomly approves visas from countries with low immigration rates and expanding visa allowances for seasonal and temporary workers. The five step program is a good program. It is workable with some change in legislation and enforcement of current laws. It becomes more important when one considers the following report from WND: Costs for securing the nation’s borders are expected to increase 20.6 percent in fiscal year 2009. These include expenses for border patrol, electronic surveillance, the border fence and other security needs. President Bush allocated $44.3 billion for the Department of Homeland Security – a 4.5 percent increase from last year’s budget of $42.4 billion. While the U.S. builds a fence across much of the border, many illegals are taking a different route. Underground,” Rubenstein reveals. “Authorities have discovered dozens of illegal tunnels across the international border in recent years. Smuggling of drugs, weapons, and immigrants takes place daily through these underground passageways.” Illegal aliens also use drainage systems to travel across the U.S.-Mexico border – from El Paso to San Diego. “One tunnel, actually a system of two half-mile passages connecting Tijuana with San Diego, is by comparison a superhighway,” he wrote. While the Border Patrol attempts to stop these underground incursions with steel doors, cameras and sensors, harsh weather conditions and human smugglers destroy the equipment and barriers. These costs, and the expenses of providing “enhanced driver’s licenses” as alternative passports for citizens, RFID chips, government databases and watch lists are expected to soar. In his research, Rubenstein finds that the average immigrant household generates a fiscal debt of $3,408 after feder al benefits and taxes are considered. At the state and local level, the fiscal debt amounts to $4.398 per immigrant household. “There are currently about 36 million immigrants living in about 9 million households, so the aggregate deficit attributable to immigrants comes to $70.3 billion,” he writes. “… Immigrants could deplete the amount of funds available for infrastructure by as much as $70 billion per year.” Rubenstein cites figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, projecting that the U.S. population will reach 433 million by 2050 – increasing 44 percent, or 135 million, from today’s numbers. A full 82 percent of this increase will be directly attributable to new immigrants and their U.S.-born children. “The brutal reality is that no conceivable infrastructure program can keep pace with that kind of population growth,” he wrote. “The traditional ’supply-side’ response to America’s infrastructure shortage – build, build, build – is dead, dead, dead. Demand reduction is the only viable way to close the gap between the supply and demand of public infrastructure.” He concludes, “Immigration reduction must play a role.” The five step program that the Legion proposes is a sound one. It will require the federal government to tighten immigration policies. The policies don’t appear to require bigger government. It does require ou r Democratic-led government to take a tough stand on illegal immigration, one I believe they will never take. Since our government at this point in time will never toughen the laws, this booklet will go largely ignored by our representatives in DC and that is the shame. The American Legion wants to remind of us the facts surrounding 9/11 and the plot to kill Fort Dix soldiers, nothing more, nothing less. It is time for Congress to listen to the more than 2 million veterans who claim membership in this organization. It is time to secure our borders, it is time that the American people realize our security is at risk as long as our borders are not secure